Quest - The vanishing of Flight MH370 : the true story of the hunt for the missing Malaysian plane

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Copyright 2016 by Richard Quest.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Quest, Richard, 1962 author.

Title: The vanishing of Flight MH370 : the true story of the hunt for the missing Malaysian plane / Richard Quest.

Description: New York : Berkley, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015045541 | ISBN 9780425283011 (hardback) | ISBN 9780698407770 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Incident, 2014. | BISAC: TRANSPORTATION / Aviation / Commercial. | TRANSPORTATION / Aviation / General.

Classification: LCC TL553.53.M4 Q47 2016 | DDC 363.12/42dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045541

International edition ISBN: 978-1-101-98918-0

FIRST EDITION: March 2016

Cover photograph of plane by Thomas Luethi.

Cover design by Daniel Rembert.

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To my colleagues at CNN both in front of and behind the cameras. Without your collective efforts, this book would not have been possible. We truly did go all in to cover this story. And we will continue to do so, wherever it goes.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

W heres that plane? If there is one question I get asked most by CNN viewers these days, this is it. From politicians and CEOs to doormen and cabdrivers, time and again they want to know, What happened to that plane? Where is it? Malaysia Airlines flight MH370with 239 people aboarddeparted from Kuala Lumpur shortly after midnight on March 8, 2014, bound for Beijing, China, and has never been seen since. Despite the largest aviation search in history, virtually nothing was found of the aircraft in the wake of its disappearance. Sixteen months later, thousands of miles from the flights path, a piece of an airplanes wing washed ashore on Reunion Island. Still, this bit of evidence and a flimsy trail of electronic satellite data are all we have to go onplus a huge amount of speculation and confusion.

The most difficult search ever undertaken in human history.When Australias prime minister Tony Abbott uttered those words in April 2014, it was not just the usual hyperbole of a politician. What happened to MH370 has been described as a unique, unprecedented, and extraordinary mystery. Planes may crash, but they are not supposed to disappear without a trace. Earlier ocean crashes, such as Air France 447 or Air India 182, have demonstrated that wreckages can typically be located within hours. Airlines today own the most modern aircraft, featuring up-to-date navigation technology, while regulations govern everything from the number of hours a pilot can fly to the fire-resistant fabric used in the passenger seats. Despite the precautions, no one has been able to pinpoint the final resting place of MH370 and those on board. All the while we know that if you lose your iPhone, it can be traced within minutes.

At the heart of this mystery remains the question of the cause of the planes disappearance. Was it mechanical, or was it criminal: Did someone deliberately take over the aircraft and set it on a course to the south Indian Ocean, intending to kill all on board? Would that someone turn out to be an unknown hijacker or terrorist, or could it have been one of the pilots?

I have spent hours debating the possibilities of what might have happened to MH370 with those who declare what must have happened. Frequently, whenever I suggest that they keep an open mind because, unsatisfying though it is, we dont know, there is the inevitable ah, but surely... followed by a series of half-truths, myths, and rumors that have been allowed to enter the debate and fester.

Do I have a view of what might have happened? I do, and I will share it. In doing so, I am not blind to the obvious options, but prefer to keep an open mind on the eventual outcome. As will become clear in the chapters that follow, as a television journalist, I became frustrated, and even angry, with some of the pundits with whom I had to work who were quite prepared to convict the pilots long before any evidence had been found. Instead, this book will stick to the facts as we know them. In the end, you will be left to make up your own mind about where you think the evidence leads.

The disappearance of MH370 has been a serious failure for the multibillion-dollar aviation industry, revealing disturbing facts and behaviors. That one of the most advanced aircraft in the world should vanish, while an airline left hundreds of desperate families waiting for news of their loved ones, is unpardonable. In response, airlines have rewritten their rules from top to bottom. An alphabet soup of international organizations responsible for air travel safety held high-level meetings and set up a task force to look at ways to ensure that planes are always being tracked in real time. Even CEOs I spoke to were as astounded as the general public that planes were not always being tracked to a fine point of precision. Some of the changes did not come soon enough: as suspicion about MH370s pilots increased, discussions were held about a two-person in the cockpit rule, stipulating that if one pilot temporarily leaves the cockpit, he or she should be replaced by a flight attendant. Yet the considerable amount of talk led to very little action. If such a change had been made, the crashing of Germanwings 9525, in which a rogue pilot deliberately flew his airliner into a mountain, possibly would not have happened.

When all is said and done, MH370 boils down to one simple fact. For the first time since the Wright brothers first flew, this industry, which prided itself on a policy of safety first, is having to cope with the unthinkable: a plane disappeared. It is no wonder the head of the airline organization IATA, Tony Tyler, decried, A large commercial airliner going missing without a trace for so long is unprecedented in modern aviation. And it must not happen again.